PREPA bond claim hearing to argue bondholders’ claim

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain set the topics to be discussed in the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority bond claim estimation hearing in early June.

Swain has said the size of the bondholders’ claim should guide how much money the plan of adjustment should give them.

On Tuesday afternoon she said June 6 will be occupied by legal arguments, June 7 will have the evidentiary hearing, and June 8 will be the day for the closing argument.
 

The June 6 legal arguments will be on six topics. The parties’ lawyers will have a total of between 20 minutes and 45 minutes to present their views on the topics including: “the burden of proof and applicable legal standards in a claim estimation; temporal scope of equitable remedy access to net revenues for purposes of estimation of unsecured net revenue claim; applicable law/statute of limitations, valuation concepts [—]discounting to present value; the distinction (if any) between ‘claim amount’ and ‘claim value,’ scope of operational expenses to be taken into account in determining net revenues” and “BlackRock’s 2016 relending bonds.”

The bondholders have argued even if one assumed their claim was “unsecured,” they would still have a claim to be paid 100% of what they are owed.

By contrast, the Puerto Rico Oversight Board has said the law, as Swain has interpreted it, means the bondholders are only entitled to a $2 billion claim against the $8.47 billion that was owed to them when the board put PREPA in bankruptcy in July, 2017.